[Mactire]

I'm counting down the hours, my DX50 will arrive tomorrow.
The past day I have done vigorous searching to get an answer to the following question: what is the maximum read spead of the DX50?

I'm perfectly willing to spend some cach on a fast card, but not more than neccesary.

Beibg able to play 24/192 audio files it suggests high data traffic from the card. I'm just not sure how large such a data stream would be.

Does anyone know what the maximum read speed is of the DX50?

 

[Mactire]

This morning I spent an entire class writing this post. Then it timed out and it was all gone -_-
 
Since I couldn't really find any data on read speeds on (any) player I decided to look at it from another angle: file types.
On the interwebs I found the following table for uncompressed audio:
 
Uncompressed Audio Stream
16/44.1 - 0.086 MB/s
16/48 - 0.093 MB/s
24/48 - 0.141 MB/s
24/96 - 0.265 MB/s
24/192 - 0.563 MB/s
 
I was about to calculate a similar table for other file sizes... but none are larger than an uncompressed audio stream.
And with uncompressed 24/192 at roughly 0.5 MB/s there isn't really any reason to do so.
 
Looking at the following table we see the minimum read/write speeds of common SD card speed classes:
 
Class 2 - 2 MB/s
Class 4 - 4 MB/s
Class 6 - 6 MB/s
Class 10 - 10 MB/s
UHS 1 - 45-50 MB/s
 
So for playback of high-res audio files it really doesn't matter what card you use. Class 2 already has four times the read/write speed of an uncompressed 24/192 audio stream.
 
Does that mean you don't benefit from a high(er) speed card? Well, no. You need to copy files to the card at some point. And loading a 64GB card at 2 MB/s does take quite some time. But the benefit is really small. Most of the time such a big amount is only when you start to use a new card. After that it's only a few albums at a time.
 
So, just pop in a Class 2 card right? It's cheap and doens't matter right? Nope again. There are capacity restrictions:
 
SD - Max 2GB (4GB was made but is uncommon)
SDHC - 4GB - 32GB
SDXC - Max 2TB
 
For high capacity players standard SD cards are out of the question. Adding just 2GB doesn't really make sense. Common MicroSD cards are Class 10 or higher. So getting a 'cheap' high capacity card will suffice and with a minimum of 10 MB/s or higher data transfer is manageable.
 
It did strike me as odd, such low data streams on high resolution audio.
But then again, the iBasso DX50 has a write speed similar to a USB 1.1 drive. Assuming it is indeed a USB1.1 card reader it's maximum read speed is 1.5MB. Trice the 24/192 uncompressed.
 
So bottom line. It doesn't really matter for playback. And besides initial (large) data transfer to the card there is no real benefit getting a über high speed card. It makes more sense to pay some attention to seek out a reliable brand. There are some really cheap cards out there that may not perform as good as large brand cards or have a limited lifespan.
 
I really learnt from this little bit of research. And if I'm wrong please do chip in. maybe this information will be useful for someone else.